Designer clutches at straws for inspiration

The drinking straw isn’t something that usually inspires much other than school bridge-building projects (You remember – you laboured away with straws and Blu-Tack, then your classmates watched in glee as your effort collapsed before the book it was supposed to hold got anywhere near it).Glaswegian artist Scott Jarvie has managed something a little more impressive. He has gathered thousands of these straws to create both a light and a chair (that hopefully won’t collapse like a wobbly school bridge).

The Clutch Chair (above) is built from 10,000 drinking straws and has already won plaudits from architect extraordinaire Zaha Hadid. Jarvie has now followed this up with the Clutch Light, which uses hundreds of the same straws, and, like the chair, is also inspired by the structural characteristics of trees.